Wild, Wonderful Whites of the West: West Glacier, MT

West Glacier, MT - July 14 - 17

After leaving Spokane and saying bye to the fancy parks where we have stayed, we headed to the KOA at West Glacier - located on the edge of Glacier National Park. This trip had both interstate (I-90) and some smaller roads, but still all truck approved which we now know all about thanks to our trucker's mapping book. The trip from Spokane to the KOA was 290 miles. While on the interstate we were overtaken (surprised? I'm not) by what I called the "Orange Bullet." A bright UT orange Prevost, and would you believe that it belonged to Russell Coaches which is based in Knoxville. As it flashed by, I could see "Knoxville, TN" painted on the basement doors. We finally came to the conclusion that it must have been a band that doesn't quite have enough money to have its own coach painted, so had hired Russell Coaches to drive them around. Anyway, still pretty awesome to see TN all the way out here! GO VOLS!!!

The Orange Bullet zooming along. We actually kept up very well with him on the hills

The view from some of the non-interstate roads we travelled on. So beautiful. Obviously, the colors aren't this vibrant, but I like them a lot! Dad isn't a fan, so I'll have to include some more "normal" looking pictures.

A huge lake we passed on the way to Glacier.

Dad will like this picture better. We did have a few rain sprinkles on this leg, but nothing to get too excited about. Montana has those big skies, just like you would imagine. This travel day was the hardest I've had at staying awake; especially in the afternoon!

I think this stay at KOA has been the third KOA stop of our entire motorhoming experiences...ever. KOAs are usually packed and very busy during the summer, so we were lucky we were able to get a spot that would fit us. This KOA was down a narrow road (well, from the Newell perspective, at least) but had a HUGE and open area to pull into to get our site information, and we had no trouble pulling into a site after unhooking. This KOA was clean and showed evidence of great care and attention. It was much more of a "campground" than were some places where we might park the Newell. I promise, we are NOT snots about camping; we just have to make sure the places we stay fit us, and usually those end up being the fancy places! Anyway, the KOA had little cabin and medium cabin sites with lots of greenery and flowers, tent sites, a pool, plus a little diner and ice cream shop. Basically, they had it all. And it was SO BUSY!!! Children running around everywhere, people on bikes, eating, swimming, the works.

Entrance to the West Glacier KOA

Miserable photography, but the large area to pull into

Amazing view of the park from our bike ride inside the KOA

The weather report for the two days we were in Glacier did not look good but we forged on with our plans. The major reason for going to Glacier National Park is taking the Jeep on the "Going to the Sun Road." - However, since it was raining, Dad dubbed it "Going to the Clouds Road." The length requirement of a vehicle on that road is less than 20/21 feet so we knew we were in for a twisty road with lots of views.....that is if we could see through the clouds. You don't even want to know what we paid for gas or how hard it was raining when we left in the morning around 9:30. The beginning of the road was about 10 minutes away and off we went. The drive was so much fun! Even though it was VERY cloudy, the rain slowed some and the views were still spectacular. Yes, believe it or not, there still are some glaciers. The ones that are near the road are referred to as "snow bridges" and were dirty because of all the car traffic. Not only did we see some great views, we also saw a lot of red buses that do tours across the road.

All of the mountains in this area were carved by glaciers. There are some on the top of that mountain in the distance. It was chilly outside (obviously).

Rain and a waterfall - this part was one way due to construction

Dad - where did the road go? This area is two lanes!

This is my favorite picture from this day. Glaciers, mountains, and trees all in one.

Self explanatory. But awesome to see!

Melting glaciers - but still a glacier!

Snow bridge/glacier. This one was still fairly thick as we could see when we passed. I would have taken a picture, but my taking pictures while on the move skills are still pretty bad.

The bear and horse glaciers. I have to give credit to Dad for seeing the bear face there on the left, and then I saw the horse. Our first bear wildlife experience this trip! Yeah!

More glaciers.

At the pull off where we had a snack. If you look closely at the little waterfall there about half way up the picture, you can see the bridge the water goes under and where the cars go over. (not as in over the mountain, though!!)

Cold, but we survived the Going to the Sun road!

The route we planned for this little trip was basically a huge circle, but when we got to the bottom of the major mountains, we decided it would be fun to do "Going to the Sun Road" in the reverse direction, so we did. By this time, the weather had clearly up quite a bit and Dad was able to have better views from the driver's seat.

We also visited the little town of West Glacier to look at shops and pass the time. While we were there, we decided to go into the Canada information center and quickly determined we should go back to Canada the next day to see Alberta and the other side of the Glacier National Park called Waterton Lakes. We found enough good maps and information to help us make a great plan for the next day.